1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless telecommunication networks. In particular, this invention relates to ticket number services offered in a femtocell base station.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The proliferation of number of mobile subscribers and increasing demand for more coverage as well as higher data rate have given rise to deployment of femtocells. Femtocells are small base station just enough to provide indoor coverage. This enhances the quality of communication indoor and operators are able to off load traffic from macro network since they use the customer backhaul to connect femtocells to the operator's network. Hence, reduces their operational expenses since femtocells provide cellular service to mobile subscribers using data service of the user (e.g., DSL, fiberoptic, cable, WiMX, etc). Unlike macro base stations, setup of femtocell is indoor at the customer premises, which requires installation improvements. Also, femtocell is an enabler for location based services (LBS) since they pin-point the location of the mobile subscriber without requiring any other locationing equipment.
The femtocell access point provides wireless communication in an indoor wireless area within a residential enterprise while a service provider may provide wireless communication in a macro area with a macro base station. The femtocell has an interface with one or more wired or wireless ports to establish communication between mobile subscriber and wide area network. Additionally, the femtocell may include one or more processors and memory to implement various services described below.
Femtocell can be connected to operator's core network in several ways. Each standard defines the means of connection and access. For example, in 3G UMTS, industry standard bodies are working on an interface where a co-located architecture of NodeB/BTS and RNC/BSC are placed in femtocell access point (FAP aka Home Node B). There are also two other architecture for 3G; SIP/IMS based architecture, UMA based architecture. Femtocells connect to a femtocell gateway (FGW, aka HNB Gateway). In WiMAX, on the other hand, femtocells have the functionality of macro base station and connect to access service network gateway (ASN-GW).
Femtocells are plenty and unlike macro base stations, which are fewer in number, provisioning and management of femtocells are handled differently. Since it is in the customer premises, femtocell architecture is similar to fixed wire-line broadband networks. The femto forum recommends that Broadband Forum's TR-069 “CPE WAN Management Protocol” and the data model for UMTS femtocell remote management was ratified as TR-196. This way secures CPE auto-configuration and management, including diagnostics and troubleshooting, performance monitoring, and software/image management, is performed on a common framework.
On one side, a femtocell gateway has an interface to femtocells and on the other side, it integrates to operator's packet and circuit services. In other words, FAP GW is a concentrator of control and data traffic of femtocells.
In brief, a femtocell network shall satisfy two dimensions: the ability to maintain quality of communication at carrier-grade level with required infrastructure, and openness to host advance services to enable service providers to capitalize on service differentiation opportunities and streamline operational costs.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,289,214 (Backstrom), U.S. Pat No.6,374,102 (Brachman et al.), U.S. Pat No6,643,505 (Kamperschroer), and U.S. Pat. No.7,239,881 (Lekutai), as well as U.S. Patent Application Publications 2008/0207269 (Byrne et al.) and 2009/0156208 (Vesterinen et al.), all describe various femto/picocell systems that use SMS messaging. However, none of these references suggest or imply using SMS messaging to create a ticket number service.